


Shhhhhh.....

by MemoryCrow



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Daddy Issues, F/M, Hearing Voices, Hyperion Heights, Madness, Memory Loss, Need, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Season/Series 07, Secrets, Sexual Coercion, Visions, and daddy has issues too, rhymes and nonsense, waif and older man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 10:06:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemoryCrow/pseuds/MemoryCrow
Summary: I had a prompt from Northern queen for a Tilly/Henry Mills story, and that's what I set out to do. I've failed MISERABLY. (Sorry!! I'll try again). I got sucked into my own sick, little world, where I can't resist Rumple in any form.Sooo.... in case the tags don't cover it, this is the sort of thing with a potential for tiggering. There is mild coercion, and while I'm assuming Tilly is of age, there's a very clear age difference. It could be interpreted as an older man taking serious advantage of a young and unstable woman/girl. It's not meant to challenge or offend; it's just yet more of my own dysfunction. Nevertheless! I hope it's readable and entertaining. I really loved writing Tilly; I think she's become a new favorite.And Northern queen; I'll work on Henry Mills.  :)





	Shhhhhh.....

Tilly hop-hopped, safe behind her rabbit mask. There he was; Henry Mills. Pretty thing, wasn’t he. Not so pretty as Rogers, but that was another sort of pretty, another sort of story. _Don’t touch_! said the Rabbit. Tilly felt an echo of pain.

Henry sat on a park bench, looking at that bloody little thing they all looked at. Little, talking boxes or what-not. People fell into them, like rabbit holes.

Her hopping came to a halt. She saw two women standing behind Henry, each with a hand upon his shoulder. One was regal and dressed all in black. One was… sacrificial? And dressed all in red. One was familiar.

Oh, hatter-tatter-scatter-matter. Splatter-shatter, pitter-patter.

She lifted the mask with caution and peered out at the world. No oddly placed and oddly dressed women, dark and fair. That was probably for the best. She put the mask back in place, its eye-holes were her own. Yes, the women were there, but much faded. _Keep fading, sisters_. Wrong place, wrong time. She resumed her hop until she met Henry’s bench. She plopped down upon it.

Looking up, Henry gave the light smile he gave everyone. He always looked distracted, like he’d recently been dreaming. He was made of stories. Tilly was in touch with that sort of structure.

“Tilly.” He greeted.

She grinned. It was hard to speak, at least in ways that made sense to others. Words rolled around in her head, a nuisance and nearly as distracting as Henry’s wee talky-box. Not really a box, it was a small door. He would need just a bit of mushroom to fit inside.

From the tumble of her words, she asked, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

“Dunno, Tilly. Why _is_ a raven like a writing desk?”

His tone suggested that now she must deliver a punchline. She would answer, and they would hear _ba-dump-bump_! But, she had no answers, generally. No punchlines. Damn.

She slumped. “Oh, no one bloody knows. It’s just something people say to pass the time. Or to keep you out of locked cupboards.” Or to keep you _in_.

“Really?” Henry raised a brow. It was so like Rogers, but – oh – innocent. Innocent. “What people are these?” He smiled, taking the sting out of his disbelief.

Tilly wanted to lick him. He looked like ice cream and frosting. He looked like flower petals after a fresh coat of paint, or like he was covered in the dust of luna moths. He would taste of crystals, of fresh milk, sugar sprinkled over his eyelids. She smelled warm caramel and an incense that burned sweet.

She shrugged. She tilted her rabbit head.

 _His doom, his daddy and she_. Words. Always bloody words, piling up in front of her so that she had to climb over and look around. Furniture and stairwells built of words. Rubbish heaps, full of them. _This is my wrinkle, I made it. Oh… lover, cock. Spirit, impregnated._ No, no. Wrong. Inappropriate.

She blurted, “You stink of witches.”

“Oh, thanks.” Then, “Um… very random and weird.”

Tilly pushed up her mask. She looked at Henry from eyes much lighter than his. She watched sunlight fall through clusters of leaves and find Henry; it painted over the straight bridge of his nose, over his upper lip. It looked like magic.

“Don’t you like random and weird, then?”

“I guess I like it alright.”

He _did_ smell of witches. And, generally, of women. He was surrounded by them. There was an abundance of women in his life; not nearly enough men. Maybe this was what made him into ice cream and frosting. Sweet.

Seven, six. Pick-up sticks. Sticks and pricks. Cocks and rocks. Red Rover, Red Rover. Send Henry on over. She took a stealthy glance at his crotch. Was he keeping secrets, there?

She couldn’t stop her mouth, her head. Looking with intensified longing to the patches of blue, seen through the trees, she said, “Bird feet scratch the sky.” She looked back to him. Her eyes implored. He was clearly missing all that roiled inside her.

Reasonable, he agreed, “I imagine they do.”

Oh, he was only patronizing her. None of the encounter meant anything to him. He didn’t know about the women who stood behind him. He didn’t know about anything.

Resigned, Tilly said, “Goodbye, Henry.”

He heaved a sigh. She was a mystery to him. She wouldn’t mind, if only he had more curiosity to unravel her. Curiosity killed things, so was said. Oh, well.

“Alright, Tilly. Bye-bye.”

 _Bye-bye. Rock-a-bye. Rock-a-billy. Tilly-Killy-Lily-silly. Silly rabbit_. She rose from the bench, mask secure, and hopped along her way.

 

 

 

Weaver was in the small and cluttered hole she called home. Bloody snoop, that one. Though he would point out it was a fine quality in a detective. _Pft_.

“Oi. Wonder what _you_ want.”

She didn’t wonder. Words and dreams befuddled her with Weaver as much as with anyone, but some things had been made very clear.

He was holding her dolls. _Wrong_. She collected them, snatching them away and slapping the backs of his big-knuckle hands as he smirked.

“Pocket-locket-clock it- _fuck it_.”

“Language, dearie.”

 _Make a wish_ , he’d once told her. There were too many; wishes, blinking off and on like stars. Zippy, like fish. Wish-fish.

“You don’t approve of me playing with your dolls?”

“Play with _me_. My dollies, three, look back in mute soliloquy.”

“Not to fret, Tilly. I’ve come to play with you.”

She hadn’t meant it like that. Fucking-fucker-fuckhead. Frustrated, she took off her rabbit mask and threw it, with violence, into a corner.

Weaver-believer. Weaver-deceiver.

The Rabbit led her on. It led her astray. _Silly Babbit, kicks are for Trids._ What? Oh, nevermind. She would divorce the Rabbit and call upon a wolf, a guide and guardian. He’d eat the Rabbit right up.

… Was _she_ the Rabbit?

Maybe it was a serpent who looked after her, tricksy and sly. He coiled at her feet, letting her think she might be in charge. He fed her on some sort of magic serpent-milk. People milked serpents for venom. Well, that was just odd. Was that right?

Holding up a doll, making it speak to Weaver, Tilly’s doll-voice said, “Give me the serpent. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here, to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to Take. Back. The Serpent. You Have. Stolen.”

…. Maybe the serpent was a Goblin.

Weaver wove the words into his own design. He always did that. One moment, she hated him… he played with words, with _her_ words, knowing they were a difficult jumble for her. He acted like everything he did to her was her idea. He left pennies, lying about. _Why_? Why this annoyed her, so, she couldn’t say. But it _did_. He disliked carrying change in his pocket. He left little stacks of pennies, like tiny, copper chimneys, over her doorway. Between bricks in the wall. She feared there was an entrapment in it.

He unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers. He pulled it out. Pocket-locket-pocket-rocket.

One moment she hated him, the next… she needed him. It was terribly desperate.

Holding his cock, he said, “Here’s your serpent, dearie.”

No, no. Not _that_ serpent. _That_ Goblin. That’s not what she’d meant. But it spoke a naked truth; it was unmasked. It was a hot thing and did nothing to disguise its lust or agenda.

He stroked it a little. He was self-assured, even within the absurdity of his actions. He swaggered when he walked. He was nothing like Henry. He wasn’t innocent at all. She had a vision of Henry as an angel… wings dark, their undersides sparkling. His feathers would be singed by her impurity. She wasn’t innocent, either.

“You killed my innocence.” She told Weaver.

She looked at his silver hair and dark eyes… the gaunt lines of his often-sardonic expression. His expression wasn’t sardonic as he looked at her. His expression was deep. It was full of lust. He’d been hard since she’d discovered him mishandling her dolls.

“ _Shhhhh_.” He told her. “It’s a secret.”

“One red kiss and your bloody  _suffering_.” For that was how he’d done it.

“You made a wish, dearie. That was part of it as well.”

“You bloody Pooka.”

At that, he smiled. Behind the deep darkness of his hooded eyes, she could spy the amber glow of the Pooka’s gaze. She’d seen it, always.

She watched him undress, her hunger growing by the second. Angry with herself, she took her dolls and made them face the wall. Veruca, Elizabeth, Marianne. She whispered, “She’s not stupid. Some girls wander by mistake.”

She turned back to Weaver. Weaver-conceiver-revelator. He sat in one of her ramshackle chairs, legs wide apart, serpent-cock standing up against his belly. His belly was a bit portly; she wanted to feel all over it. He was unashamed. The hair on his chest was beginning to silver.

“Come sit on my lap, love.”

Tilly chewed on her thumbnail, fretful. Oh, she was wet, embarrassingly so. Weaver wouldn’t taste like ice cream and frosting. She knew his taste… embers and raw fire. It burned her up from the inside. She was ashamed to want it.

“I have to _think_.” She stomped a foot. “If only for practice.”

“Oh, Tilly. Grow up.”

This? _This_? From _Him_? _Him_? She rounded on him. “How-how-how-how- _HOW_?”

“Come _here_.” He was losing patience.

Tilly went to him. She sat on his lap, cuddled up to his belly, his chest, his cock. Beneath her, his thighs were strong and unyielding.

“Good girl.”

His hands touched her face. He brought her close and kissed her, and she tasted fire. Maybe whiskey. He would infect her.

 _My lover kissed my lips. He laid waste to my soul. There’s a Goblin in the butter dish_!

His kiss was soft and brutal and he held her in it for a long time. His tongue edged out, another serpent. It made a feathery motion, a flickering serpent-tongue, against her lips. It tickled. She opened her mouth and the serpent tongue flickered to her own tongue. Sparks burst within her chest and belly. She moaned… she would die of pleasure. _Ashes, ashes. We all fall down._

 

 

Weaver bled through the room, he was all over. His voice ran through Tilly like honey and she was so relieved for his presence. She needn’t think, try to sort things out. She needn’t fight and _try_ and struggle. The exhaustion of it all. The confusion.

He directed. He moved her and placed her as he wished. Voices crowded her head, but they didn’t matter. He had her. He worked her.

He moved inside her… it felt so slick, so muscled and good. On her bed, he was on his knees. He held her legs apart, his hands at the backs of her pale thighs, pushing them back. He thrust, but it was slow, slow, slow. His cock was long and luscious and hot. Thick, gluttoned on sin. The wide flare of its head nudged at her opening… he pulled all the way out, slid all the way in. He watched himself do it. He watched her face.

“Do you like my cock, Tilly?”

She meant to say, yes. Her hand reached down to pet it, where they were connected. Her wet fingers found her clitoris and played for a moment, but he slapped her hand.

“Bad girl.”

She was good, she was bad. Oh, he caused anguish. Breathless, she said, “You’ve kissed me on the inside.”

His lips parted. His chest rose and fell. His cock slid in and out and her body squeezed it. She tried to keep it for her own, but her body rocked against it, craving friction, always giving his cock back to him. Her clitoris felt like a siren; it begged for attention… for kisses and petting.

Tilly felt a little sob in her chest… not sorrow, but _something_. She whimpered, “Mommy, daddy… _please_.”

“Please what, dearie?”

She shook her head. She didn’t know what. He meant to consume her and she wished he would. Completely. She saw herself lying on a pallet of white feathers, a mystery that covered the forest floor. Then, tossing a pebble into the air, she disappeared. The fire of his intellect… his lust and his pain; just eat her up, burn her up.

“Eat me up.” She gasped.

He took her at her word, not fully grasping the intensity of her death wish. A wish, like all the others. He slid out of her and leaned heavily on his hands, braced above. His mouth came to hers in a long, voluptuous kiss. The kiss was wet. Her pussy was wet. She felt opened-up, all over. She glowed from the inside, like a Pooka.

He moved down her body, stopping to suckle at the sensitive peaks of her breasts, to make her belly tremble with his whispery kisses. He settled between her legs. For a time, his tease was nearly unbearable. His flickering serpent tongue feathered at her inner thighs, at the edges of her opening. It made the lightest of butterfly kisses at her clitoris.

Tilly moaned and rocked, barley breathing. She tried to reign in her thoughts, to claim them as her own. She tried to turn Weaver into Henry, but it wouldn’t happen. It was her wish; she didn’t want the change to happen.

Weaver was what she wanted. Her demon lover. The long snake coiling, darkness uncoiling. He felt her all over, felt her up. His tongue became firm and muscled and he thrust it inside her. Tasting her deeply, he moaned in pleasure, in anticipation. His hips made a steady grind to her bed. One of his hands lay warm, big over lower belly. The other gripped her hip, hard enough to mark her. His tongue moved between fucking her and fluttery kisses, a wet suck at her needy clit.

He kept it up until she came, her mind lost to a burst that was black as pitch, as vibrant as angels. Her voice rang out and her knees came together.

Weaver growled, “Oh, no you don’t.”

While she was still lost to the burst, her sex an over-sensitized bundle of nerves, he went back to his knees. Holding her legs apart, he hilted himself inside her. It was too much; Tilly nearly screamed. Her body tried to push him out, still contracting. He was insistent. He fucked her, hard and fast, the sounds of bodies slapping together a shocking and regular rhythm.

Tilly’s body shifted, as had her mind. Instead of trying to protect itself from Weaver, it opened. It gripped him, squeezing. She was blind and mad and breathless, her voice hoarse with need. Her arms and legs clamped around him like a vice and she let herself be ridden. She rode back.

As she felt him tense, felt the erratic spasm at his hips, she came a second time. Her climax milked his cock, the serpent. With a sound that was almost agony, he pressed flush to her body. With the rhythm of his pulse, his blood, he spilled into her.

 

 

 

Henry saw her, perched upon her troll. She was surprised to see him head her way. A ghost moved around her as he approached. Weaver was alive, yet his ghost kept watch over her. Its voice was a hollow scraping of dead leaves, feathers, old rose petals, crumbled to dust. It found her fingers and sucked on them, seeing heat. Ever was the ghost cold.

He was always in control, but he was needy.

Tilly played with a flashlight she’d found. When Henry came level to her, she shined it briefly to his face. He grimaced, squinting.

“Hi, Tilly.”

She grinned. The witch-scent was all over him. _Blister, my sister_. But none of his women were her sisters; they wouldn’t understand her. She pressed the flashlight to the back of her hand and stared at her palm. She showed Henry.

“Look. I can see through my hand.”

“Well. Not exactly.”

“I don’t mean I can see you _through_ my hand. I mean my bones and blood. _Look_.”

“I _see_.”

He still patronized her. She wondered why he’d come over. She would never make herself understood.

She said, “Bless me, father. For I have Zen.”

“Oh, really?” He smiled for true and it made light spill from him. As if a giant flashlight was lit behind him. Tilly could see through him.

“Yes. I’ve convinced the violent and unruly to take up macramé.”

“That’s excellent. We’re all saved.”

In the distance, Tilly saw Weaver. He, in the flesh, not only his ghost, watched her. He watched her talk to Henry. Detective Rogers was with him, so pretty. So dark, his eyes and expression full of a stormy drama that was absent from Henry’s handsome face. _Don’t touch_! said her belly, as it always did. As the Rabbit did. Her mind curled around the name Eloise Gardner with an acidic feeling. Her body conjured up a touch that ended in pain.

Weaver and Rogers threw her off. She lost her coherent and almost normal momentum. She muttered, “They are so old, and out where it was forward.”

“What?” Henry asked. Well, she could hardly blame him.

Roger’s eyes were painful. He sought a Queen Bee. The bee, the Queen buzzed in Tilly’s head. She said, “Castle on the sea. The Cat and Queen are having tea.”

Henry gave a look of, _Oh_. This again. Of course.

Tilly wanted to stop. Badly. It was impossible. Words flowed out. Her own mishmash was fed with Weaver’s honey… her mouth opened as easily as her legs. “With Bridgette cakes and leprosy.” Oh, why?

“Doesn’t that sound fun?” Henry said. It wasn’t really a question.

Weaver was coming over. In a rush, Tilly said, “You’re very pretty.” He should know, she thought.

Henry smiled. He lit up, again. A thrill went through Tilly, she was dazzled. A connection made, she thought. A synapse, completed. Then Weaver was upon them; Rogers, gone.

Tilly said, “Uh-oh. Daddy’s home.”

Weaver flushed. She’d made him feel a fool. In his stead, she thought, _bad girl_. A girl who would have no treats, tonight. She knew he liked it if she whispered, _daddy_. She also knew he did not like such things to be out in the open, public. Weaver liked secrets.

Henry turned, a bit surprised. “Oh… hello, detective.”

“Henry.” Weaver allowed a civil, if curt nod. Looking at Tilly, he said, “Shall we get you some lunch, dearie?”

“We could paint the roses red. They’re sweet, sweet, sweet to eat. Fragrant when dead.”

It was putting Henry off, she could plainly see. He didn’t know how to act. He was surprised that Weaver seemed so casually close to her. Less daunted, Weaver’s low rasp of a voice said, “I was thinking of something more in the way of a sandwich.”

“Marmalade?”

“Indeed, Lady Marmalade. Shall we?”

He held out his arm to assist her down, then offered the same arm to link to hers. Cordial. Gentlemanly. _Oh, big, fat lie. Big, bad wolf_. It was all huff and puff and yet it surprised Tilly. She threw an uncertain smile to Henry and received an uncertain smile in return.

She thought of Weaver saying, _Shhhh…. It’s a secret_. She supposed Henry would just have to wonder.

To Weaver, she said, “Piggy.” She tapped him on the shoulder as if tagging him. He looked rather aggrieved.

“I beg your pardon.”

She giggled. Sensing his misunderstanding and offense, she pet his belly. There were furry questions. There were secrets. She said, “Can I get a piggy-back?”

“I think not.”

Leaning close, sad to leave Henry behind, she murmured, “ _Shhh_. It’s a secret. _Bad_ daddy.”

His look to her was sharp. Brow creased, mouth pursed, jaw tensed. She was trouble. She would be in trouble. Sometimes she could not stop until her panties were unceremoniously yanked down and her bare bum was slapped, hard enough to burn. She didn’t wish for the pain, and yet; she did wish for it.

 _You made a wish_. The serpent said, _wishhhhhh_.

How did he know when she wished?

“How jovial you are. Perhaps it’s because you fancy our fair Henry.”

 _Fancy schmancy. Cock in pantsy_.

Tilly didn’t answer. Any answer seemed certain to bring on more punishment, and her punishment was already assured. She’d made him blush in front of Henry. It wasn’t as bad as a blush before Rogers, even Roni… but it wasn’t good.

“Is that it, dearie? The source of your happy-piggy-jolly?’ Oh, how he mocked her head. “Are you thinking sap-sticky thoughts of pretty boys, getting sap-sticky fingers and sap-swollen tongues?”

He’d taken a bitter tone that rendered Tilly absolutely silent, though she longed to play with his words. _Happy-jolly. Sap-sticky_. She strolled with him, arm linked like a lady. Her fingers rested lightly on his forearm. Even this cost him, she thought. To be seen about Hyperion Heights, affecting a romantic posture with the Urchin of the Heights, the mad Rabbit who lurked upon the troll. It tampered with his _shhhhh_. He would play it off as a wholesome version of fatherliness, a far cry from the daddy he was in her bed.

“Cat got your tongue, Tilly?”

She nodded. Let him think it. The big, smiling and sometimes invisible cat had taken her voice. It could do that. Most cats could, but chose not to.

She thought of sap-sticky boys. She only knew the sticky fingers of Weaver. An odd resin in the whorls of his fingerprints, a green and smoky scent.

“You’re not ice cream.” She said, her voice returned.

He looked at her, both brows up. Like she was off her nut.

“Your keen powers of observation never fail to amaze me, dearie.”

“Don’t make fun.” she pouted. The Rabbit cautioned her. _The man is bewitched, little girl. Don’t try him_.

But he _tried_ her. He tasted, sampled. He drank the cheap, sweet scent she used as perfume. He smelled of her, then, like cookies and angst, while his own scent was too hot to classify. “So awful.” She shook her head. “The feather plucked from his wing.”

“What are you prattling on about?”

Tilly unlinked. She swiveled and hit Weaver as hard as she could, a forceful whack on his upper arm, her fist balled up, knuckles pointed and sharp. It was wrong of him – _him!_ – to make light of her word jumble, her confused worlds. His understanding of her mind was the reason he’d slipped in, the slithery serpent. With his daddy-body and silver hair and bloody _pennies._ She revved up to hit him, again. He could not reduce her to prattle.

Startled, he backed up. He rubbed his arm and glared.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Tilly?”

Fucking… fuck. Blithering balls. She couldn’t make the right words. She was so flustered. She would never know a white-knight-boy who tasted of ice cream and frosting because she was a bleeding whack-job. She would only ever know a black bishop who tasted of smoke and fire.

She stomped her feet, she flounced. “The wound was _deep_! My soul leaked _out_!”

He understood her. His face softened. He gathered her back to his arm, close to his body. He tucked her hair behind her ear. He murmured, “Ah, love. I’m sorry. I’m a bad, jealous man. I was rude.”

And would be ruder, still, once alone.

He would put her over his knee. _Oh, my little girl. Let me tell you a story about the wicked world_.

He was the story. _He_ was the story of the wicked world.

 

 

 

Tilly wrote Henry a note. She wrote the words beneath a picture she’d painted…. Inky watercolors that ran all together. The sea. Sometimes she would go and stare at it, her head quiet, at last. Weaver sometimes picked her up, there, staring out at the harbor. Ships the size of buildings. But beyond them was sea and sky, a world of sea birds. He drove her home and fucked her in a solemn, quiet way, not wishing to pull her from her ocean trance.

To Henry she wrote _: Everything that’s done is done so much, it seems to come undone. A looping loop of Nothing seems to endlessly feed into dreams._

 _A ghost, I swim inside the dream of Nothing, moving endlessly. And in the dawn, Nothing is gone. The Everything goes on and on. The ghost that’s me swims in the sea that never sleeps, endlessly_.

She didn’t sign it. She left it with Roni and hoped that maybe he could understand her, though all she did was prattle on.

 

 

 

After, she went home and found Weaver, hovered over her chessboard.

“I can’t say I follow this.” He confessed.

Tilly smiled. That was good. Sometimes she needed to hide in the board, as she hid behind her rabbit mask. The world was full of invisible women and cats with agendas. It was better if she left him puzzled, now and again.

Giving up on the board where he – himself – resided as a bishop, he pulled her to the bed. He was being rather sweet. He, too, smelled of witches, but it was a different scent from the one that attached itself to Henry. The scent was his own, part of the fire. Sea-quiet, Tilly could distinguish it from its other elements.

He lay down with her and spooned to her back. His head nuzzled to her hair, his mouth to her neck. His arm came around her body, his hand warm on her belly.

It was strange. Tilly felt something almost like power and wondered why. She felt she might ask him to do almost anything, and he would do it. He might give her a piggy-back ride through Hyperion Heights. He would blush, but he might do it.

Aloud, she said, “He doesn’t want to lose her.”

Quiet, Weaver agreed, “No. He does not.”

“She’s precious. Dear.”

“She is.”

“He knows her.”

“He does.”

She smiled. There was satisfaction in her story. She liked it. Lifting his hand from her belly, she held it and studied its palm. Rough and red at the heel, at the base of his fingers. His fingers were long. Relaxed, they curled in a bit. She smelled the smoke, a smoldering, charred scent.

Playing with his hand, feeling its structure and texture, she said the thing he might not like.

“She knows him.”

His body tensed. No, he was not comfortable with being known. Still, he pressed to her, warm. It felt good to push back against his belly. To feel the heat from beneath his shirt against her back.

After a moment, he agreed, “She does.”

Tilly smiled, again. She gave small kisses to the tips of his fingers. She was pleased.

She tried to see ahead, but the future was ever harried and sucked-on by memory. Weaver was sweet, now. Soon he’d roll her over. He’d sate himself inside her, pour his unnamed sorrows into her. He would fill her up and she would want it. It was as far as she could see.

While he was still soft and indulgent, she spoke aloud the unspeakable _shhhh_. The _other_ secret. A _secret_ secret, one no one could know. Not the Rabbit. Not Veruca, Elizabeth; not Marianne. Not Tilly. She drew her finger along his lifeline, and whispered, “Make the dark lights in your hand.”

His mouth suckled to her neck. He kissed up to her ear, then her cheek. He sent shivers all along her skin. He purred. When they were kept, he loved secrets. He hoarded them. Chin digging into her shoulder, he watched. They both watched his captured hand. A wine-purple light began to etch over the lines of his hand, glowing. The light became glittery. It began to fill the small room.

Tilly watched it, as entranced as if it were the sea. Stronger than ever, she scented a witch.

At her ear, Weaver said, " _Shhhhhh_."

 

 


End file.
